Saturday, 23 January 2016

Moon: High Priestess of All Habit and the Familiar

The Moon is often mentioned as the planet associated with the "soul", "sensitivity" and in general all the good and fluffy or bad and thorny staff each person imagines they have within. I consider all of the above as being only partially true as the results of Moon's fundamental action. This is none other than to govern all that is inherited, learned and spontaneous. The Moon is the soul only inasmuch as we call "soul" a deeply rooted impulse, inexplicable to our rational mind, seemingly divorced from external or internal circumstances, but almighty and capable of driving us to behaviours that comfort us, offer us security and safeguard our vulnerable ego. My doubts regarding any relation between this lunar "soul" which is so taken with our small, partial and mortal ego and the circumstances of our own personal drama amidst the trillions of humans on the planet, has anything to do whatsoever with the Soul that is the infinite, ageless, beautiful and virtuous within every human being. Something doesn't add up.The Moon is feelings to the extent that feelings are a fully unconscious, spontaneous and uncontrollable reaction to external stimuli. If we clearly know why we are feeling something we have departed the Moon's territory and dangerously approximating the domains of other planets that deal with feelings and allow for consciousness as an agent of activity, inner or outer. Moon does not get along with consciousness. Moon is the "I feel this and that, but I don't know why", "I want her, despite that I can see I am too good for her", "I understand that he is useless and a moron but I'm good to him because I have very strong feelings for him". The mind is deeply unaware. We have no idea why this specific or - more often - this unspecified feeling has undertaken us. The end result is a feeling, the stimulus an external factor, the cause an acquired behaviour that is engraved deeply within and creates non-stop without our consent or permission.The Moon is our temper when we call temper the inner processes that produce results in our daily life, but of which we are unaware and cannot for our life apprehend, follow or manage. Yes, the Moon is indeed the part of our temper that was shaped during our lunar years, which, not perchance, are the infant and toddler years, the very early childhood. Yes, it is the part that is hidden due to the inability to recall in detail the occurrences of that period, yes, it is the part that was shaped when we still had few or no filters and multitudinous perceptions. The Moon is sensitivity, when we call sensitivity the kind and degree of vulnerability of our ego. It is sensitivity as the result of our spontaneous psychological mechanisms' success or failure to encompass, transubstantiate or reject external stimuli. "I'm very sensitive, I cannot take any negative comments on my person". "I'm very sensitive in fact, the moment a person tells me of his problem, I fall apart". However, sensitivity is a nice word whose origin is the Latin sensate "perceiving or perceived through the senses". In the end sensitivity is more of an ability associated with the quality of operation of the senses and with sensibilities than with emotion. Mozart was musically sensitive.Van Gogh was visually sensitive. Lucullus had a sensitive palate. Any person becomes more sensitive to touch when they close their eyes. It would go too far to attribute all these to the Moon. On the contrary, we can and should attribute to it the quality of our reaction to anything that seems to be threatening our ego structure. The Moon is the defense of the acquired, the mighty pull of inertia in a horoscope, the often invincible force of habit. And there is nothing more useful than good habits.

In the end, the Moon is everything we do daily without giving it any though or deciding it. It is our upbringing, our breeding, the gift and the curse - at once - or our parents and of our childhood. It is of fundamental value because it orchestrates a variety of reactions in the backstage to afford us the time and space to develop conscious activity. The only question that need trouble us, is what part of our being it governs. Because but for all its usefulness, the Moon, even in its healthiest manifestation offers survival, safety, comfort and a healthy ego but never joy. Joy is a solar quality and is directly linked to consciousness and action, not with automation and reaction. Let's not devote our entire life to the titan Selene (Moon) but let's remember as often as possible and its brother Helios (Sun). That way we will be able to undertake our own upbringing and finally teach better habits to ourselves.The quality and effect of the Moon in every natal chart manifests in many and varied ways that are determined by its placement in zodiac sign and house, its aspects to other astrological pointers and, naturally, the overall tone of the horoscope itself.